Loading...
Exercising Non-Dominant Mediative Power Violence Interruption in the Periphery Communities of Florianópolis, Brazil
Ordway, Jared Lodric
Ordway, Jared Lodric
Publication Date
2015
End of Embargo
Supervisor
Rights

The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Peer-Reviewed
Open Access status
Accepted for publication
Institution
University of Bradford
Department
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Awarded
2015
Embargo end date
Collections
Additional title
Abstract
This thesis examines how informal mediation is practiced in Brazil’s
urban periphery communities, which are often associated with high levels of
violence and insecurity. Based on ethnographic data from low-income
neighborhoods in Florianópolis, my analysis of local people’s interventions
offers insight into the way that non-state, unarmed actors exercise mediative
agency in the midst of everyday violence and insecurity. While a growing body
of research shows that state and non-state actors are guided by diverse
conceptions, intentions and approaches when they attempt to mediate public
and private conflict amongst residents, less attention has been paid to the
symbiotic relationship between, or the social impact of, conflict intervention and
the reproduction of violence. This thesis argues that interveners use their
interactions with antagonists in a particular territory in order to cultivate nondominant
power, which serves to obstruct and interrupt the way that violence
reproduces and transmits into residents’ lives. As such, it suggests that
mediators can enable social change because they have a very particular
relationship with the different and interdependent types of violence present in
the periphery. Interveners develop and deploy a repertoire of social mediative
tactics in order to contend with the complexity of local tensions and the erosion
of democratic citizenship that these tensions produce. Defining mediative
practices as a source of power invites discussion into community mediation’s
strategic potential in the project of urban peacebuilding and violence reduction,
positing new directions for applied practices in Brazil and beyond.
Version
Citation
Link to publisher’s version
Link to published version
Link to Version of Record
Type
Thesis
Qualification name
PhD